Exploring Jung and the Collective Unconscious

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Show 9 Prelude to Warren Jeff’s Ex-Wife February 26th 2019

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Recommended Ministries

Additionally, there are four ministries I want to remind you about that are fantastic:

Theexmormonfiles.org with Bishop Earl – over three hundred interviews with people who have left Mormonism and embraced a relationship with Jesus. That is the Key – and embraced a real relationship with Jesus – and Bishop Earl does a great job talking people through their journey.

We have TalkingtoMormons.org. Dude – so much to see on this site as they have all sorts of extremely educational animations plus more (which we will address next week briefly).

Then we have checkmychurch.com – our newest ministry, but not one bit lesser. This brave site goes after local churches in Idaho and Utah and reviews them as honestly and directly as possible. But the pastors are clamming up on her now because she is honest. See, she doesn’t put up with religious shenanigans like tithes and not teaching the Bible. And they know it. Just take a look at this:

RUN SECOND SPOT

SO that’s checkmychurch.com

Finally, our little Wendy started a ministry years ago that has grown and grown in views and viewership without anything but content. It’s a YouTube site called. What she has done is taken the best clips from hundreds of hours of HOTM and put them forward there on the site. Some of her clips have tens of thousands of views, so for some shorter shots of HOTM, check out, on YouTube.

Insights into Jungian Concepts

When I was in my lost years – 17 of them – I had a great interest in psychology and read a few works from some influencers in the field – Rollo May, Eric Fromme – but most especially Sigmund Freud. Reading about Freud a person cannot help but see his focus on sexuality and the influence of parents and family on the individual, but it is hard to read about Freud and not hear of a guy named, Carl Jung. Freud, first a father-mentor type figure to Jung, then colleague and finally rival, but the two men contributed greatly to many elements in psychology today. I sort of got stuck on Freud because the Lord touched my life at that point and I never passed into learning about Jung.

One Saturday morning a couple of years ago I was sitting in the bagel shop with my friends Allen and Kelly who happened by. Kelly is an intelligent therapist herself, and we somehow got onto talking about recurring themes in our lives and she pointed out to me that Jung was big on such things (which she sort of summarized as the collective view). Ironically, when I heard that that phrase, “the collective view,” something rang in my head and it hit me like a ton of bricks.

Admittedly, as cynical as I am toward metaphysical claims in the name of God, I am openly metaphysical in the way things seem to unfold in the collective of our species and histories – I always have been, as juvenile as this can be when people see connections and relationships in what appear (and may just be) disparate events. I have had to learn to truncate this mystical mind I have long possessed and offset it with an examination of facts and other possibilities as a means to remain rational.

The Collective Unconscious

In any case, when Kelly explained this simple view of Jung I took a half-day and did an audit on his life and teachings. Jung likened the collective unconscious to "a reservoir which stored all the experiences and knowledge of the human species." This was one of the clear distinctions between the Jungian definition of the unconscious and the Freudian. Jung’s proof of the collective unconscious was his concept of what he called synchronicity – the unexplainable feelings of connectedness that we all share. Due to an almost inexhaustible knowledge of mythology, religion, and philosophy, (he was especially knowledgeable in the symbolism connected to traditions such as Alchemy, Kabbala, Buddhism, and Hinduism) Jung was able

Collective Thoughts and Consciousness

To weave a historical tapestry of collective thought, and therefore, to him, a collective consciousness. Utilizing this vast knowledge, Jung believed that humans experienced the unconscious through numerous symbols encountered in various aspects of life such as dreams, art, and religion. Interestingly enough, when I meandered through Philosophy I found myself strangely enamored with Hegel and his views relative to Triatic structure and dialectical thinking. But to really get the essence of Hegel in a VERY short period of time, we have to understand the fact that he saw reality only in totality – not in parts. In other words, only the whole is true – the whole of history, especially.

To Hegel, “every stage or phase or moment that is partial, is therefore partially untrue, not partially true.” Hang with me, now. Hegel's grand idea is "totality" which preserves within it each of the ideas or stages that the totality has overcome or subsumed. Overcoming or subsuming is a developmental process made up of "moments" (stages or phases). The totality is the product of that process which preserves all of its "moments" as elements in a structure and not just passive stages. Think of these structural elements like you would of the structure of a building or an entire architecture piece. Got all that?

The Spirit of the Age

Now let me bring it together in my point for tonight, which is a point that will introduce our guest next week. It is not surprising that Hegel, who used Volksgeist (meaning the "national spirit") and Weltgeist (meaning, "world-spirit"), would help popularized the term “zeitgeist,” or spirit of the age, which he did not create but is nevertheless used a lot today. Where Hegel and others speak to Zeitgiest, I have long maintained, publicly and here on the show, that, similar to Hegel, there is a viable real kulturgeist that moves and drives individuals, to some extent or another, who embrace whatever elements of a culture that they are apart.

In other words, borrowing from Jung and his “synchronicity” and “collective,” and then from Hegel and his ideas on “totality” and “world and national Spirit,” I am personally convinced that within every culture – the culture of the bowling, softball, nascar, porno, beerhalls or polo grounds – there exists a powerful KULTURGEIST – which will almost always influence its participants to some extent or another. It also appears that within a historical context, the KultureGeist, like a virus, will pop up in unexpected places and people and exact itself upon the world scene.

Historical Contexts of Kulturegeist

Let me give you an example – as far-fetched as it seems. The last day of the Mountain Meadows Massacre – the day when the actual Terrorist attack occurred on the Fancher Wagon Trains by a religious group, and more than a hundred men, women and children were slaughtered – was September 11th, 1857 – right here in Utah. Of course, on September 11th, 2001, 144 years later, and on American Soil, we had another Terrorist attack where thousands died at the hands of another religious group, right here on American Soil. Coincidence? Unconnected and unrelated events? Perhaps.

And while there are evidences of kulturegeist in some of our national and international tragedies – Colombine and the kulturegeist of Nazi Germany through Dylan and Kleobold. There is a spirit, a definitive kulturegeist in every murder, every act of violence, every form of aggression, act of vandalism, and sexual perversion. But to the point, I am personally convinced that today, in modernity, and ever since the 19th century, the world continues to experience, in some form or another, the KultureGeist established by the early Mormon founders.

We know from historical records that Joseph Smith produced his own currencies, and this spirit of counterfeiting erupted through the life of one Mark Hoffman hundreds of years later, and tied directly to all things Mormon, ended in the deaths of several innocent people. We know that Smith’s aim, throughout his non-religious and then his religious life, was the getting of money – and all you need to do is look at the institution and see that influence in its assets – and especially in white-collar schemes of criminality that seeps in and through some of its people. We know their history of resorting to violence, and how this pops up in the lives of some of its members, of right-winged politics and of its attempting to influence government through theocratic influence – come to Utah and look around where the religion actually took over a public street and tightly runs the state's liquor laws, and of its top-down structure of authority. But all of this aside, the kulturegeist of Mormonism thrives.

Sexual Depravity and Authority

No more powerfully than in sexual depravity, and especially in the sexual depravations of females by males. Occasionally, the authority, the money, the violence, and the sexual perversions all coalesce into one giant eruption – like in the case of the Laugherty Brothers and the throat slashing of one of their wives and then the baby for refusing to practice polygamy.

And that brings us to the Kulturegeist that has never left Mormonism – polygamy – and in fact, not even just polygamy, but the apparent need for males to invade the bodies, lives, and minds of females of all ages. Of course, this Kulturegeist was not only firmly established by the founder Smith through his own personal practices of taking young teenagers to bride but other men’s wives, but the guy received a revelation to get other men to practice it too and taught that unless they did they couldn’t obtain exaltation!

Historical Context of Mormonism and Polygamy

I mean, on the corner of State Street and South Temple right here in Salt Lake City is a house where thousands of visitors a year are escorted through its confines by shining bright missionaries telling the sanitized story of Brigham Young’s beautifully crafted home. What many people don’t realize is that at one time, behind that mansion, were little rooms that held Brigham Young’s lesser wives, who had not climbed high enough to live in the Mansion with the other select women of the man.

Can we not see that when fourteen-year-old Elizabeth Smart, who was the same age as Fanny Alger when Smith took her, was abducted by Brian David Mitchell and Wanda Barzee and raped in the hills above her Federal Heights home, then held captive by the couple for more than nine months that kulturegeist was at play? And what about this recent show stunner, Abducted in Plain Sight on Netflix. I mean, ANYONE who has been LDS or is LDS can see the major role Mormonism had in the events that went down in this poor family and can explain the influence the kulturegeist had on their thinking. The rest of the viewing world is screaming, what the fluck, but I get it – sad as it is. BTW, we are working on getting Jan Froberg to come on the show – we’ll see.

Instances of Abuse

But I don’t think it’s possible for some, most LDS people, in the face of Smith and His founding seeds, Young and his propagation of those seeds, along with the doctrines of “eternal procreation," for the worthy, of multiple wives STILL in practice in their temples, of their Temple ceremonies involving partial nudity, and of the idea that more of everything is better in the faith to quell that Spirit of Mormon Culture. Last year we had two interviews on this very show that dealt with sexual perversions within the LDS Church – one with my dear friend Kristy Johnson and the other with McKenna Denson. But that was just scratching at the surface of the smut that goes on behind the scenes.

In 2001, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) paid a three-million-dollar settlement to Jeremiah Scott after Scott filed a lawsuit in 1998 against the church for what his attorney described as an “attempted cover-up” of sexual abuse Scott suffered from church member Franklin Curtis.[1] Of course, the LDS Church denied legal liability in the case, and said it was settling the lawsuit based on "litigation economics" alone.[1]

1. In September 2008, LDS Church bishop Timothy McCleve pleaded guilty to sexually molesting children from his ward.[2] He was sentenced in December 2008 to one-to-15 year prison terms for the abuse.[3]

2. In March 2010, former LDS Church bishop Lon Kennard, Sr. was charged with 43 felony counts of sex abuse and sexual exploitation of children and was imprisoned in Wasatch County, Utah.

3. In November 2011, Kennard was sentenced to three terms of five years to life in prison to be served consecutively, after pleading guilty to three first-degree felony counts of aggravated sex abuse of a child for sexually abusing his daughters.[4][5]

4. In December 2013, LDS Church bishop Todd Michael Edwards was sentenced to three years in prison for molesting two teenage girls who attended his congregation in Menifee, California. Edwards received two concurrent sentences of three years in prison for two felony counts of sexual battery and sexual penetration with a foreign object. A felony charge of witness intimidation was dismissed as part of a plea bargain with prosecutors after Edwards pleaded guilty.[6]

5. In January 2014, two men filed a lawsuit in the U.S. state of Hawaii against the LDS Church, alleging that they were sexually abused as children on a church-owned pineapple farm in Maui from 1986 through 1988.[7]

Sexual Exploitation in Religious Institutions

Wayne Coleman was arrested and charged with luring a minor for sexual exploitation after a forensic examination of his laptop and cellphone revealed sexually graphic conversations and an exchange of nude photographs with a teenage student in Brazil.

In August 2017, former LDS Church bishop Erik Hughes pleaded guilty to sexually abusing two teenage boys from his congregation in Mapleton, Utah. The abuse occurred in June 2014 during his tenure as bishop. Hughes received concurrent 1-15 year prison sentences on the sexual abuse counts, and 0-5 years in prison for witness tampering.

On August 15, 2017, MormonLeaks published a three-hundred and sixteen (316) page document which contained confirmed and alleged instances of child sexual abuse between 1959 and 2017.

On October 30, 2017, an Australian court sentenced Darran Scott to 10 years in prison for sexually abusing boys, some of whom he met as a Mormon leader.

Unveiling Ongoing Abuse

And in between all of these known stories, we must have thousands upon thousands of untold tales – of sexual abuse – at the hands of LDS leaders and members on the weak, unsuspecting, and vulnerable. I know it's not just Mormonism, the Catholics and Evangelicals are right up there with them with their own culturegeist, but within Mormonism there is something really… lurid about their shit. It's like it's almost “doctrinal,” in a some skewed, effed up way.

When I think about it happening I can almost hear the perpetrator saying to his victim: “Now, this is natural, and godly, and the Lord loves you… now hold still a minute…” Ucking gross.

The Case of Warren Jeffs

And that brings us to a grossness that overflowed onto the National scene a number of years ago when a FLDS man by the name of Warren Jeffs, was placed on the FBI’s top ten list. Warren Steed Jeffs (born in1955) is, or was (we’ll find this out from our guest next week) the President of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS Church). Now, let me make this plain: The FLDS Church and the LDS Church are cousins. One followed Young, the other believing that the modern LDS church abandoned the principles established by Smith, left the wealthy powerful cousin and chose to be fundamentalists after Smith’s core teachings.

The Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS Church) is one of the largest of the fundamentalist Mormon denominations and one of the largest organizations in the United States whose members practice polygamy. The FLDS Church emerged in something like 1929 when its founding members left The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church largely because of the LDS Church's suspension of the practice of polygamy and its decision to excommunicate members who continued the practice. I don’t blame them. The eternal doctrine established by Smith was polygamy and the LDS church kowtowed to Governmental pressures and put an end to the physical practice of it.

The fundamentalists said, no way. As a result, the not material polygamists (but who still practice spiritual polygamy) have just become a major money maker and the fundies have become purists of the Smith doctrine AND the result of such doctrine – suffering.

Warren Jeffs' Crimes and Convictions

In any case, the modern President of the FLDS, Warren Jeffs, in 2011, was convicted of two felony counts of child sexual assault, for which he is currently serving a sentence of life plus 20 years. In 2006 he was placed on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted List for his flight from charges he had arranged illegal marriages between his adult male followers and underage girls in Utah. In 2007 Arizona charged him with eight additional counts in two separate cases, including incest and sexual conduct with minors. In September 2007, Jeffs was convicted of two counts of rape as an accomplice, for which he was sentenced to imprisonment for 10 years to life in Utah State Prison. This conviction was overturned by the Utah Supreme Court in 2010 due to flawed jury instructions. Jeffs was extradited to Texas, where he was found guilty of sexual assault and aggravated sexual assault of 12- and 15-year-old girls, for which he was sentenced to life in prison plus 20 years and fined $10,000.

Warren was the son of Rulon Jeffs who was the leader of the FLDS Church at his deathSeparation from God—now overcome. Physical death remains, but it no longer separates us from life with God., and was survived by 20 wives and approximately 80 children. I suggest that CultureGeist created by Smith that moved the Rulon Jeffs to impregnate numerous women he called wives, was the same spirit that moved Warren to molest and rape girls, was the spirit that moved Brian David Mitchell to rape Elizabeth Smith, was the Spirit that moved “B” to rape Jan Broberg, was the Spirit that got Jans parents to let B sleep with her, take her for trips, give him hand-jobs and have sex with.

The Tragedy of Organized Religion

Him to; was the same Spirit that molested our friend and sister Kristy Johnson and the same spirit that drove Bishop Bishop to rape McKenna Denson in the MTC. When will people wake up. These religions will ALWAYS end up in human tragedy because they are the product of MAN and men cannot escape the collective sway of evil they create for themselves? How long will we hack at the branches of these evil empires and call them good because they give a few bucks to the poor while praying on the innocent? The answer is NOT in reform, it’s not in revolution, it’s not in getting a policy to change – that is shining the brass on the Titanic.

Deconstruction of Religious Structures

The answer is wholesale deconstruction, on men exiting the business of religion, letting the zeitgeist of all organized religions snuff itself out, while at the same time letting people individually pursue whatever beliefs they choose to accept – without the trappings of group think, organizational power-structures, and pretended religious authority. I challenge the LDS church to turn their vast empire into a single trust for helping people medically, physically, and with vocational training. Drop Smith and Young, torch the Beehive house, and smash Gilgal gardens.

The Case of Warren Jeffs

Prior to Rulon Jeffs death, Warren held the position of “counselor to his dad.” When his father died in 2002, Jeffs became his successor with his official title in the FLDS Church being, "President and Prophet, Seer and Revelator" as well as "President of the Priesthood." Following his father's death, Warren told the high-ranking FLDS officials, "I won't say much, but I will say this—hands off my father's wives." And then addressing his father's widows he said, "You women will live as if Father is still alive and in the next room." Within a week, Warren had married all but two of his father's wives; one refused to marry Jeffs and was subsequently prohibited from ever marrying again, while the other, Rebecca Wall, fled the compound. Next week, right here on heart of the MatterTGNN’s original show where Shawn McCraney deconstructed religion and developed fulfilled theology., we are going to meet another one of Warren Jeff’s wives – Brielle Decker Blanchart – who also escaped his clutches.

Ironically, or in the collective spirit of synchronicity, it was none other than Kristy Johnson who told me about Brielle. See, that’s the thing, Kulturegeist need not only be evil and negative. We can, as individuals, help create our own kulturegeists of real love, real concern, and real selflessness. That was started by its founder Jesus Christ, the Son of the Living God nearly two thousand years ago. His culture has NOTHING to do with religion. Nothing to do with men in authority over other men and women. It is truly a geist (spirit) that invades and overcomes all other cultural influences, and enables its adherents to do good, to love selflessly, to create better futures for our progeny, not worse.

Along the way, let’s learn from our sordid pasts – and destroy those things that help keep them alive by replacing them with the one who truly overcame them all – Our Lord, our Savior, the very Son of the Living God.

Next week, ex-wife of rapist Warren Jeffs – Brielle Decker Blanchart, here on Heart of the Matter.